


risen from the salt and sea

by Yuu_chi



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Improbable knowledge of medicine boats and murder, Intensely Requited Romance, M/M, Morally Grey Will Graham, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 17:15:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15539124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: “Our past experiences have taught me that I am perhaps more prone than I would like to only seeing what I want when I examine your motivations,” Hannibal says quietly. “It is not a mistake I think I could survive again.”Will skates the hand he has on Hannibal’s shoulder up until he’s cupping the back of his neck, thumb smoothing through the fine ash of his hair. “Are you worried about surviving me, Hannibal?”Hannibal tilts his head into Will’s hand. His eyes flutter closed. “I think you already know that you have well and truly defeated me, dear Will.”





	risen from the salt and sea

The fall does not kill them.

_Of course not,_ Will thinks as Hannibal drags him from the sea foam. _That would have been too easy._

The pain is awful. Will has more holes in his body than he’s comfortable counting, and the salt water burns furiously everywhere it touches him. Deliriously, he wonders if Hannibal would even be able to eat him at this point. Physically, he means. It seems like he’s more scar tissue than flesh.

“Will,” Hannibal says, frozen fingers tight on his arm. “Keep moving. You mustn’t fall asleep.”

“I’m moving,” Will snaps, even though ‘moving’ is perhaps too generous a term for the desperate way they’re stumbling along the beach. Will lost one of his shoes in the fall, and the sensation of the sand sticking to his swollen sock is disgusting.

The world tilts alarmingly and it’s only Hannibal’s steady hand on his shoulder that keeps him upright.

“I have an emergency car not far from here,” Hannibal says. “You just need to hold on until then.”

“Of course you do,” Will slurs.

He does not ‘hold on’. He manages exactly six-and-a-half more steps and promptly blacks out.

Even unconsciousness hurts. It’s so unfair Will could cry if he had the energy for it. Surely, after everything, he deserves at least a moment of comfort, just one second to catch his breath without his body fighting him every step of the way.

(and then again, he must consider, that he’s thrown his lot in with a man who kills and eats people for fun, so perhaps he does not deserve anything at all.)

When he wakes up the sun is starting to rise and he’s lying in the backseat of a sedan that looks like it has more miles on it than Will’s own car did. His cheek is furiously numb, and when he tries to speak he realizes that the right of his mouth has been stuffed with cotton.

Hannibal doesn’t take his eyes off the road, but when he reaches back Will clumsily grasps at his hand. “Not much longer,” he says. “You can go back to sleep, if you’d like.”

There’s a blanket tossed over his legs, warding off the worst of the chill, if not the shivers that ache him in its absence. For some reason, the tender way it’s tucked up beneath his waist almost breaks his heart.

Will squeezes Hannibal’s hand hard enough to hurt the both of them.

He does not sleep again.

.

The safe house Hannibal takes them to is perhaps more shack than it is house. It does not look like the kind of building one imagines Hannibal Lecter owning; a creaking tin roof and floors that squeak beneath every step. Still, it has four walls and a door that locks, and Will’s standards have always been comparatively low.

Will spits out his mouthful of bloody cotton in the bin by the door and resists Hannibal’s attempts to guide him to the bed. “Let me help you first,” he says. “You’re the one who got shot.”

Hannibal’s big hands frame his face, a thumb passing gently over the gash in Will’s cheek. “If it had clipped anything important I would be dead by now. It can wait. Let me -.”

“No.” Will pushes Hannibal’s hands away, takes him by the shoulders, and firmly presses him down to sit on the edge of the bed. “I need - let me take care of you. Please.”

Hannibal’s eyes are unfathomably dark. “If that’s what you want.”

Will’s throat feels too thick to answer. “Tell me where the supplies are.”

Hannibal, predictably, keeps enough bandages and suture kits in the cabin to put a small hospital to shame. Will kneels at Hannibal’s feet and stitches the hole in his stomach closed as best as he can. It’s not all that different from tying fishing knots, really, if he doesn’t think about it too hard.

He flattens his hand against Hannibal’s chest, giving a weak push. “Turn around,” he says hoarsely. “It’s a through-and-through. I need to stitch the other side.”

The easiness with which Hannibal offers Will his back is enough to make him nearly cry all over again.

_God,_ Will thinks, watching detachedly as his needle dips beneath Hannibal’s skin, _how did we get here?_

Afterwards, Will helps bind Hannibal’s belly with long rolls of bandage. He doesn’t wince so much as once. By the time Will tapes it all down, the shakes are back. Hannibal catches one of his wrists, pressing at his pulse point with a heavy thumb.

“Enough,” he says, voice perhaps the softest Will thinks anybody has ever heard it. “Let me help you now, Will.”

He makes Will shower before he stitches him up, and Will stands shivering and aching beneath the tepid spray, watching the endless blood wash down the drain. He wonders how much of it was his. How much of it had been Dolarhyde’s.

How much was Hannibal’s.

When he’s clean enough not to court infection, Hannibal reaches past him to turn off the squealing taps. The hand he rests between Will’s naked shoulders feeds something inside of himself he hadn’t realized was hungry. He leans into it greedily, allows Hannibal to help him from the bathroom back to the bed, dripping and nude.

“I have anesthetic,” Hannibal says, hand gently cradling Will’s chin, just beneath the ruin of his cheek.

Will shrugs and offers him a gory grin. “Save it,” he says. “We might need it later. I think I’m too fucked up right now to even feel anything.”

“If you’re sure.”

“You’ve never been squeamish about causing me pain before, Doctor,” Will rasps. “Why the change of tune?”

The corner of Hannibal’s mouth turns down, just ever so slightly. “I think we’ve given enough agonies to one another to last a lifetime,” he says.

Will doesn’t reply. He fists his hands in the damp blanket either side of his thighs and sits still as a statue as Hannibal pieces him back together with a surgeon's precision but a touch too tender to pass as clinical.

Between them, they have thirty-eight stitches; Will the reigning champ with twenty-seven to Hannibal’s modest eleven. Hannibal washes his hands in the bathroom sink, and Will watches as blood already begins to seep through the back of Hannibal’s bandages. Hannibal catches him looking in the bathroom mirror, meets his gaze unwaveringly, dares Will to say something, anything.

Will has nothing to say. He does not look away.

There’s one bed in the cabin, and Hannibal strips down before joining Will, the both of them as naked as the day they were born. Hannibal graciously offers Will a strip of no man's land between them, but Will curls a hand around the back of Hannibal’s neck and pulls him in close, pushing him down against the sheets and arranging himself over Hannibal’s chest as if it’s his right.

At this point, he’s fairly sure it is. The very thought of somebody else curled up with Hannibal like this stokes a smoky, possessive hunger in his gut. He thinks if it ever happened, he might kill them. He generously does not allow himself to examine the surety of that thought.

Hannibal’s heart is hammering beneath Will’s ear, but he hesitates for only a second before he threads his fingers through Will’s hair, gentle and soothing.

Will sighs. “If we both fall asleep, what are the chances one of us wake up to a dead body?”

Hannibal’s hand does not stop stroking through Will’s hair. He makes a thoughtful noise. “Unlikely but not impossible.”

That’s good enough for Will. “Wake me up if you’re planning on kicking the bucket,” he says, eyes drifting closed. “I don’t think that’s the kind of journey either of us want to make alone.”

.

In a surprising turn of events, they both make it through the night. Will’s too exhausted to be grateful. It takes the both of them three trips to haul the meagre supplies from the cabin to the car.

“Where to now?” Will asks, after he’s bullied Hannibal into the passenger seat. The steering wheel feels cold and alien beneath his hands.

“North,” Hannibal says, and offers no further comment.

Will does not ask. They head north.

They spend the better part of two days driving, switching off every ten hours or so and stopping only long enough to refuel and piss. Three times Hannibal pulls the car over and and corrals Will into the backseat so that they can check each other’s wounds, and in a rare show of generosity, fate has so far spared the both of them infection.

“When you gutted me and left me to die in Baltimore, I spent two months in hospital with a fever,” Will says. Hannibal’s hands which have been gently pressing a fresh bandage to his cheek freeze, if only for a second. “Seems fucked up that I can get stabbed twice and fall off a cliff, only to come out the other side with nothing but a couple of stitches.”

“Twenty-seven is a far few more than a couple,” Hannibal says. He presses the bandage down until it sticks unevenly against Will’s rough stubble. His thumb rubs gently against the raw skin there. “And I did not leave you for dead.”

“You left me,” Will says tiredly, reaching up to catch Hannibal’s wrist. “Whether it was for dead or not didn’t really matter.”

Hannibal does not reply, just stays kneeling between Will’s thighs on the rough back-road asphalt, one hand to Will’s face, and Will’s fingers frighteningly tight around his wrist. Eventually, a car passes by, the dip of its headlights casting Hannibal’s face into an array of shadows.

For a moment, Will thinks he’s looking at the wendigo. He wonders when that stopped frightening him and instead gave him comfort.

“Come on,” Hannibal says, getting back to his feet. His hand slips free from Will’s grip. “We need to keep moving.”

.

They keep moving for another day, sticking close to the coast and away from any major roads.

Eventually, Hannibal takes Will’s place behind the wheel and guides them into a tiny, nondescript harbour. Will watches the way the dark shadows in his eyes seem to grow, catching and eating at the light from the streetlamps when they touch him.

“Do you have a boat?” Will asks.

“In a manner of speaking,” Hannibal says, and parks the car. He climbs out of the driver’s seat with far more grace than a man with a bullet hole in his gut should, legs long and shoulders steady.

Will follows him. “Is this the kind of ‘manner of speaking’ where somebody winds up dead?”

Hannibal smiles at him. Will can see the crooked curve of all of his teeth. “Does that bother you?”

Will thinks of Dolarhyde dead and empty-eyed by the cliff edge; he thinks of Chilton’s peeling skin and blackened mouth.

_How does that make you feel, Will?_

Mostly, he thinks, it makes him feel tired. Out here in the middle of the night with nothing but Hannibal’s beautiful needlework holding him together, his morality feels very far away. He thinks his grip on it has been slipping for a long time now, and he’s not so sure he has the energy to try and hold on.

Will yawns and tucks his hands into his coat pockets. “Let’s go.”

Hannibal stares at him. For a second, Will is absolutely sure he’s going to kiss him - and for a second, Will is absolutely sure he would let him.

He does not. The moment passes and Hannibal turns, beckoning Will silently towards the docks with a crook of his skinny, bruised finger. The boat Hannibal chooses is small but expensive looking, and he’s dead silent as he climbs aboard it. He turns back, holds out his hand for Will.

Will feels a flare of annoyance. He’s been climbing in and out of boats his whole damn life, and if anybody here needs a hand to steady their footing it’s Hannibal. The irritation does not last past his first glimpse of Hannibal’s eyes.

_It really does look black in the moonlight_ , Will thinks, and he takes Hannibal’s hand.

There’s a man sleeping below deck, grubby-bearded and exceptionally tired looking. He doesn’t wake, barely has a chance to stir, before Hannibal’s clever hands wrap expertly around his head. The _snap_ of his neck is incredibly loud in the night, and Will winces.

Hannibal drags the body from the bed and tosses it to the floor. Will can’t help but notice the sweat beading on his forehead, and thinks that Hannibal was probably the kind of doctor who made a terrible patient.

“Who was he?”

“A former client,” Hannibal says easily. “He has an agreement with the harbour master and a tendency to take his boat out on the water for weeks at a time without telling anybody.”

“Nobody will be looking for him,” Will summarizes.

“Or the boat,” Hannibal agrees. “I admit my knowledge of sailing is perhaps substandard. I will defer to your expertise, of course.”

Will can’t help but grin. “That must have cost you a lot to say aloud. How’s your pride holding up?”

Hannibal smiles back at him, the sharp edges of his face softening. He steps neatly over the corpse on the floor, and rests his chilly palm against Will’s good cheek. “My dear Will, I find no shame in allowing you to guide us. I did not bring you along merely for your pretty face and charming personality.”

Will knows Hannibal’s only teasing at him, but heat crawls up the back of his neck all the same. “You didn’t bring me at all. I came along by my choice.”

There’s enough tenderness in Hannibal’s eyes that Will feels as if he may drown it in. He’s back in the ocean, gasping for breath, clinging to Hannibal to keep his head above the water and knowing that Hannibal won’t let him sink.

“Yes,” Hannibal says, his warm thumb stroking the high of Will’s cheekbone. His voice is thick, the burr of his accent strong. “Yes, you did.”

.

The boat is well stocked, and between the cans lining the cupboard and the body cooling, Will thinks it unlikely that they’ll starve before the reach land.

Hannibal had made no secret of his plans to begin butchering the corpse the moment they were out at sea with no eyes to find them. He’d looked at Will intently, gaze heavy, waiting for him to say something, ask something, _do_ something.

“I’ll get us sailing, you make sure there’s no blood on those sheets,” Will had said, and disappeared upstairs to do just that.

He doesn’t think Hannibal’s testing him, if only because Hannibal knows Will well enough to understand just how he’d react to such a thing. He doesn’t think Hannibal’s giving him a chance to run away either; _this is it, your last chance at a normal life, Will_.

Will had lost his chance at a normal life the first time Hannibal had looked at him and seen something he wanted, something he _coveted_.

He can’t quite figure out where that leaves them though, but Hannibal’s secrets have never been safe from Will. He’ll figure it out eventually, there’s no rush. For the first time in a long time, he sees a future without a deadline looming ahead of them.

There’s the creak of treads on the steps, and Will turns to see Hannibal climbing from below, the dead body of his former patient slung over his shoulder.

“You know, you could have asked me to help you with that,” Will says dryly as Hannibal drops it on the wooden deck. One of the man’s hands flings out, and Will can hear a faint crack as the screen on his fancy watch breaks. Pity. Will thinks it probably would have fetched a half decent price.

“You’re sailing.”

Will glances down at the elaborate screens and dials. “There’s not really much to it,” he admits. “This boat could probably sail itself just fine.” He runs a hand over the beautiful grain of the wood. “It’s a nice boat.”

“It’s yours now,” Hannibal says.

Will snorts. “It’s nice that you want to get me things, Hannibal, but I think holding onto our stolen escape vehicle once we hit dry land seems like a poor idea.”

Hannibal’s mouth twists into a smile. He’s kneeling beside the body, unbuttoning the shirt with practiced ease. Will can’t help but wonder if the familiarity comes from his bedroom or his kitchen. “We’ll get another, then.”

“Promises, promises.” Will watches as Hannibal finishes stripping the shirt and moves on to the pants. “Do you need a hand? You probably shouldn’t be doing so much heavy lifting with a bullet wound in your gut.”

“I’m fine,” Hannibal says, not looking up from his work. “You can head below, if you want. I made up the bed with fresh sheets.”

Will ignores him, crouching down to get a closer look at his work. Beside Hannibal’s knee is a shiny, well-kept butcher’s set. Before Randall Tier, Will had only ever gutted fish and, once, a dear. It’d surprised him to learn that the mechanics were much the same.

He thinks about taking Hannibal’s offer, heading back into the cramped cabin and curling up in the warm sheets while Hannibal dismembers their dinner above. The hatch is pretty sturdy; he doubts he’d even smell the blood.

Hannibal’s fingers curve around the handle of a wicked looking cleaver. Before Will can think better of it, he reaches out, fingertips brushing the back of Hannibal’s hand.

“Here,” he says, gently taking the knife from Hannibal’s slack fingers. “Show me.”

Hannibal turns and looks at him. For a long moment he doesn’t say anything, and then he takes in a deep breath and slowly lets it out. The adoration on his face should make Will uncomfortable. It does not.

“Oh, Will,” he says. “I never could predict you.”

.

Hannibal makes them some kind of stew out of the thick strips of meat from his former patient’s thighs. They’re woefully short on fresh ingredients, but you wouldn’t know it for the bowls he sets atop the table, garnished just so and smelling like absolute heaven.

“Blanquette de veau,” Hannibal says grandly, adjusting Will’s plate ever so slightly. “The vegetables may come from a can, but I can assure you the meat is fresh.”

Hannibal had helped Will scrub the blood from his hands after they were finished, but Will imagines he still feels some of it under his nails. “Your jokes aren’t any funnier now than they were before.”

Hannibal’s hand catches his chin, tilting his face up for a moment. Will lets him, meets Hannibal’s dark eyes without flinching. His thumb smooths along Will’s bottom lip. “Eat your dinner, Will.”

Will does. It tastes as divine as it looks. Hannibal watches Will with a hungry, bottomless gaze, fingers tight enough around his cutlery to bleach his knuckles white. Will pretends not to notice even though his heart feels like a drum in his chest, and when he chases the last piece of meat onto his fork and slips it between his lips, he swears he hears Hannibal take in a sharp breath.

Carefully, Will sits his knife and fork down. He looks up and meets Hannibal’s gaze. “Thank you,” he says. “It was delicious.”

“Will,” Hannibal breathes, sighing Will’s name like prayer and benediction rolled into one.

“It’s not the first time I’ve eaten your cooking at your table,” Will says. “Not even knowingly.”

“It is the first time you’ve eaten _our_ cooking at _our_ table,” Hannibal says, and he sets down his cutlery with such precise care that Will knows it’s taking all of his control not to simply send the whole table setting crashing to the floor. “You are not a stupid man, Will Graham. You know exactly what this means to me.”

Will laughs and gets to his feet, rounding the table. He sets a hand on Hannibal’s tight shoulder and bends down, putting them at eye level, his mouth very close to Hannibal’s cheek. “If you haven’t figured out what this means to me as well, then maybe you’re the stupid one after all, Hannibal.”

It’s dead silent. Will fancies he can hear the creak of the boat rocking in the waves. Eventually, Hannibal lets out a long, careful breath. Will smiles.

“Our past experiences have taught me that I am perhaps more prone than I would like to only seeing what I want to when I examine your motivations,” Hannibal says quietly. “It is not a mistake I think I could survive again.”

Will skates the hand he has on Hannibal’s shoulder up until he’s cupping the back of his neck, thumb smoothing through the fine ash of his hair. “Are you worried about surviving me, Hannibal?”

Hannibal tilts his head into Will’s hand. His eyes flutter closed. “I think you already know that you have well and truly defeated me, dear Will.”

The thrill that shoots through Will warms him from his gut to his toes. He has the most dangerous man the world over warming his skin on Will’s palm, trusting and content, ready to accept whatever choices Will makes for them.

It’s more power than he thinks one man can reasonably be expected to be responsible for.

He twists his fingers, knotting them in Hannibal’s hair, and jerks his head back. Hannibal’s eyes fly open and a sharp hiss escapes his lips. Will looks down at him, the inviting curve of his mouth, the heavy press of his gaze, and wonders how he could ever be expected to refuse something like this.

“Do you want to kiss me, Hannibal?”

Hannibal smiles. It is a horrible, hungry thing. “Ardently,” he says. “Among other things.”

Will’s heart pounds so hard it hurts. “Show me.”

.

Will remembers clearly the first time he’d thought about kissing Hannibal.

He’d still been sick then, and Hannibal had still been more his therapist than his friend. He remembers the press of Hannibal’s office ladder against all the sharp ridges of his spine, the way Hannibal loomed over him, far closer than he’d ever allowed them before.

Hannibal’s mouth had stuck in his mind, and for a second Will’s fever-hot brain had painted it a vicious, beautiful red. _Huh_ , he remembers thinking. _I wonder what that’d taste like?_

It turns out Hannibal’s mouth tastes like their shared dinner and expensive wine. The hands that card through Will’s hair are warm and heavy; not rough, exactly, but far too possessive to ever be gentle. His weight bears Will down onto the slippery sheets, and Will cannot stop himself arching into the ache of his skin.

Molly had always been so gentle, always let him take the lead. She’d never said it, but Will knows she’d been afraid of touching at the edges of his trauma, overstepping all the claims Hannibal had made to Will’s intimacy. Her perfume had smelt dizzying like lavender, and her skin had been so soft.

He’d loved her. That had been the truth. He’d wanted her. That had also been the truth.

He’d just never loved her, wanted her, _enough_. Not like this.

Hannibal smells like hot blood and heavy kitchen spices. Everywhere Will’s hands skate he finds marred skin, discovers scars new and ancient. He was there for some of them - he _put_ some of them there.

_Fuck_ , he thinks as Hannibal forcibly tears his head back so he can mouth along his throat. _Fuck, how is it possible to miss something you’ve never had this much?_

It’s nothing short of a miracle that it took them this long to get here. They’d come close more than once, but the constant guilt at Will’s back had always kept him from toppling the both of them over the edge.

Too late for that now, he knows. Will does not do things halfway.

By all rights, the both of them are still too battered for this. Will doesn’t care. He presses his hands along the bandages wrapped around Hannibal’s stomach, digs his nails in hard enough to make him hiss.

Hannibal’s hand in his hair goes soft, and his mouth presses against the wreck of Will’s cheek. “Oh, Will,” he sighs, and he sounds almost drunk on adoration.

Will has never been with anybody who wanted him even a fraction as much as Hannibal does. It’s an addicting feeling, it always has been. His hands shake as he works Hannibal’s belt free, and they shake harder when Hannibal presses the warmth of his palms against Will’s quaking thighs.

“This is going to be quick,” Will huffs, strained, when Hannibal finally manages to get his zipper down. His hips jump as Hannibal’s hand dips inside, as impatient as Will feels.

“Then we’ll simply have to try again later,” Hannibal says, voice thick, and then he slides down the bed, reaches up to position Will’s hands in his hair, and goes down on him

Will had been right - it does not last long. Hannibal’s mouth is burning hot, and the noises he makes around Will’s dick hit his nerves like a livewire. He can hear the creak of the boat around them, stares up at the water stains on the ceiling above the bed, heels digging into the mattress and Hannibal’s hair wrapped tight in his fingers.

_How did we get here?_

He comes with Hannibal’s hands bruising on his hips, and Hannibal works him through it effortlessly, hungrily, until Will has to grind the heels of his palms against his eyes to chase away the encroaching darkness.

Hannibal’s long fingers wrap around his wrists, pulling them away, and he kisses him, hard and biting, and Will fumbles to pull him close enough to get his hands on him. “Come on, just - just let me.”

When Will manages to get his hand around Hannibal’s dick, Hannibal makes a low, groaning noise, his forehead resting against the sharp jut of Will’s collarbone, hips jerking. Will watches him as he works his hand, feels the shudder of Hannibal’s body against his own. Hannibal bites him when he comes, teeth breaking skin and making Will’s exhausted, pained body arch up against him.

For a second, Will just lays there, Hannibal’s come on his hand, and Hannibal’s teeth in his shoulder, and doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do next. He feels shaky, overwhelmed, and beyond thought.

Hannibal brushes a kiss against the bruise he’s left on Will’s shoulder and pulls away. Will watches as he climbs from the bed, the mattress creaking. He’s back before his warmth on Will’s skin even has time to go cool.

“Here,” he says, reaching for Will’s hand. Will lets him take it, and Hannibal wipes him clean gently.

Will lets Hannibal resettle their clothes, thumbs brushing Will’s hips as he pulls his shirt back down and pants up. Will shifts over, makes room for him on the bed, but Hannibal just sits there, hand on Will’s waist and watching him quietly.

“What?”

Hannibal makes a thoughtful noise, strokes his thumb gently against Will’s hip. “I’m just… savouring this moment.”

Will is far on the wrong side of thirty for the pleasant shiver that gives him. “You can savour just as well down here.”

Hannibal’s eyes crinkle a little in the corner, his smile thin, but he doesn’t move. Just continues to stare, to touch absently. Will realizes that he’s not just savouring it, he’s memorizing, locking this version of Will away in his memory palace with a devotion that borders on reverence.

Will’s throat feels strangely thick. “Come on,” he says, grabbing Hannibal’s knee and tugging. “Just… lay down with me for a minute, alright?”

Hannibal goes more than willingly, allows Will to arrange them as he pleases, one arm already going to sleep under Hannibal’s waist. It seems foolish that after everything they’d just done, that the intimacy of this should seem so crushing, but Will can feel the overwhelming pressure of it pressing against all the sore and tender places inside of himself.

He breathes out against Hannibal’s neck and squirms closer, even when his bad shoulder twinges painfully. Hannibal’s hand flutters down to stroke along the back of his neck, quiet and comforting in a way Will would never have expected from him.

It feels so surreal that for a moment Will is sure that this is nothing more than yet another vivid hallucination aimed to hit him low and leave him aching. Hannibal’s thumb sweeps along the sore skin behind his ear and Will shudders, leaning into it.

“I thought,” Hannibal says softly, “that it would take longer for us to reach this.”

Will yawns. “The brutal dismemberment of a corpse or the sex?”

Hannibal’s grip on his neck tightens for a second, a warning against Will’s flippancy, but it goes soothing almost instantly. “Both, I suppose.”

It takes all of Will’s limited energy to prop himself up on Hannibal’s chest, but he manages. He meets his gaze evenly, does not allow himself to look away from Hannibal’s dark eyes, and is surprised to find he doesn’t want to. “How long were you prepared to wait?”

“I have you,” Hannibal says. “Everything else to that is secondary and unimportant.”

“That’s evasion if ever I heard it,” Will says dryly. “What would you have done if I’d never wanted it? The murder or - or this.”

Hannibal looks thoughtful. “I hadn't thought about it.”

“Bullshit. You overthink everything.”

Hannibal gives him an amused smile. He raises his hand to sweep Will’s hair back, and his thumb lingers for a second on the knot of scar tissue he’d left carving across Will’s temple. “I’d have whatever you are willing to give me,” he says. “I have spent years upon years waiting for you to come to my side, Will. That you know me now, and that you chose to be here, is enough.”

It’s on the tip of Will’s tongue to say that ‘chose’ is perhaps too generous a term for it given the amount of manipulation and bloodshed that had proceeded this point, but he holds himself back. It’d be inaccurate to say that Hannibal hadn’t changed him drastically, but Will had been far from a passive spectator in it all.

Hannibal had changed him - had _awakened_ him - but Will had changed Hannibal, too. It is as all things are between them - equal and equivalent in the end.

“I do, you know,” he says. “Want it.”

“The brutal dismemberment of a corpse or the sex?”

Will pushes at Hannibal’s chest, but Hannibal catches his wrist and raises his hand, looking Will dead in the eye as he kisses his palm. Will feels a rush of heat crawling up his spine, warming him from the inside out. “You’re more affectionate than I thought you would be,” he observes, throat a little dry.

Hannibal’s mouth trails across Will’s fingertips. “I have been locked away for three years, Will. First never seeing you at all, and then seeing you only through the glass. Are you so surprised?”

“No,” Will allows, settling back on Hannibal’s chest. “No, I suppose not.”

Hannibal’s free hand is back carding through his hair. “What of you? You had your wife.” Hannibal pauses, and Will can hear the carefully banked possessiveness. “Your dogs. Your child.”

Will can feel a faint burn on his ring finger where his wedding band used to sit. “That’s not the same,” he says. “You know that’s not the same. And I’d be very careful talking about my wife, Hannibal.”

Hannibal’s fingers tighten in his hair. “Do you still consider her as such?”

Will sighs and rolls over, but before he can pull away Hannibal’s arm clamps around him, reeling him back in. Will considers resisting, but he’s frustrated more than he’s upset. “I spent two and a half years with Molly. You can’t just erase that because you don’t like it, not like how you tried to erase her.”

“I won’t offend you by saying I’m sorry.”

“I would hope not,” Will says carefully. “Because this only works if we’re honest with one another. No more lies, Hannibal. We’ve done that enough.”

“There might be some things you want me to lie about,” Hannibal says. “For your peace of mind, at least.”

“There isn’t,” Will says, glancing up sharply. Hannibal’s hand in his hair stalls, and he can see the startled surprise in the slackness of his face. “I don’t... I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about all the things you’ve done, both to me and to the people I love, but I didn’t come along just so you can hide me in the dark just because it might, at times, be easier.” He reaches up, curving his palm against Hannibal’s soft cheek. “I’m in this _with_ you, Hannibal. This isn’t a trap, this isn’t conditional - it just is, okay?”

Hannibal stares at him, mouth ever so slightly parted. Will allows him to look, to read what he can in the tired, earnestness of his expression. He leans in, presses his forehead to Hannibal’s and closes his eyes at the yearning feeling it opens in his gut. “This is real, Hannibal.”

Stillness for a second, and then Hannibal’s hands on his shoulders, ever so slightly shaky. “I think I am perhaps finally understanding what it must have been like to be you, my dear Will.”

Will pulls back to grin wryly. “Doubting your own reality is a hell of a thing.”

“You’ll have to show me how to work with it,” Hannibal says, pulling Will back down until he’s settled. “If you have the patience for it.”

Will is inexplicably overcome with so much fondness he feels like he can scarcely breathe. Hannibal’s hands are gentle on his back, chasing the up-and-down of his spine, and Will turns his face into the crook of Hannibal’s neck, breathing deeply until he feels dizzy and light headed. “God,” he says tightly, nails cutting into Hannibal’s skin. “How the fuck did we get here?”

Hannibal makes a soft, contemplative sound. “I’m tempted to say fate. Destiny. Tragically, the way all great love stories do.”

“Tempted to?”

Will can feel Hannibal’s smile at his forehead. “Given all we’ve survived to reach this point, I think it would be a foolish man to ever assume that we are governed by something as transient and fleeting as cosmic interference.”

Will can’t help the laugh that bubbles up out of him. “Are you saying our great, tragic love story is larger than both god and the universe?”

Hannibal’s hands on his skin, soothing along all the breakings and hurts he’d left there, gathering Will’s scars hungrily beneath his palms. “I’m saying, Will, that this is a reality we have chosen above all other options, and now that I have it, I will not be letting go.”

There was a time, Will thinks, where the bottomless echo in Hannibal’s voice would have frightened him, where the hands clutching at his back would have driven him away rather than dragged him closer. Maybe they still would have, in another one of Hannibal’s fantasy realities.

In this reality, Will thinks that if Hannibal ever tried to let him go, Will would bind them so tightly together that it’d take the force of a thousand men to ever hope to pry them apart again, cracking their intertwined bones and untangling all of their veins.

For a second, Will lets himself imagine it, the snap of their rib cages being pulled apart, the tidal wave of blood at his ankles. Around them, the boat rocks on the waves, and Will feels so utterly, completely at peace with himself and his world.

He wants to say something, share with Hannibal the awful, beautiful thing unfurling in his head, but the contentedness is seeping the strength from his body, leaving him hazy and smiling against the delicate arch of Hannibal’s neck.

One of Hannibal’s hands glides up, pressing gently at the back of Will’s head, guiding him to rest against the pillow. “Sleep, Will,” Hannibal says, voice thick with affection. “Whatever thoughts you’re thinking, you can share them in the morning. We have time.”

They do, he realizes. They have days and years and a whole damn fucking lifetime.

It’s almost enough to make Will doubt his own reality, too - a hell of a thing, that.

“Sleep,” Hannibal says again, hands warm and soothing.

And, for what feels like the first time in his whole life, Will truly, painlessly _sleeps._

 

**Author's Note:**

> listen, i understand that i am about five years too late to this fandom, but i have a seriously debilitating amount of feelings about this show and will graham specifically.  
> tumblr: glenflower  
> twitter: @doingwritebyme


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